The only brake on the will of the majority is a constitution and declaration of rights, to prevent the majority from killing or infringing the rights of the minorities or individuals. At the ultimate extreme, even Germany might well have survived Adolf Hitler had he been prepared to respect the basic rights of Jews and other minorities after he won power democratically.
President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo has not only refrained from infringing the letter and spirit of his constitution and the fundamental rights of his fellow citizens, he has bent over backwards to accommodate minorities and others who may feel, no matter how irrationally, excluded in even a small way.
The only things he demands in return are loyalty to the DRC's laws and institutions. If anyone wants him out of office, they are welcome to try, in five years time at the next election when he will have to defend his record either to win a second term or see the victory of another candidate sponsored by his party.
Jean Pierre Bemba is obviously disappointed he failed to win the election this year. But that election was as closely monitored and supervised as any election in Africa and everyone agrees the result was the honest reflection of the will of the Congolese majority.
While Bemba won a majority in Kinshasa and the west, Kabila won a majority in the east and, more critically, his minority vote in the west was greater than Bemba's in the east.
In other words Kabila won because, in the end, he was able to reach out to more people outside his traditional heartland of support and show them a vision of what the DRC could be.
If Bemba wants to try again in five years he has a lot of hard work to do. In that time he needs to show the people of Congo that he is worthy of their trust, that he believes in national unity, and that he too has a vision that stretches across provincial, linguistic and tribal frontiers to include all the DRC.
And so far he has failed.
The first hurdle was to integrate all forces that caused so much death and destruction in a brutal civil war into one army and one police force, with all men properly trained and swearing allegiance to the DRC, not a bunch of warlords.
This was never going to be easy, but it would be possible if all serious leaders urged their followers to participate to the maximum. Kabila and Bemba, as the leader of the government and the leader of the opposition, had the greatest responsibility.
President Kabila has pressed hard for the implementation of a non-political, efficient and national army. Bemba wants to retain his private forces for reasons he has failed to explain.
It seems Bemba would prefer the DRC to be plunged into war and chaos yet again if he cannot be president, a damning indictment on any man.
We hope that there is yet time and that he will become a national leader and potential president in waiting.
But if he refuses he will fail in everything. His own forces are now starting to reject him and if all he wants to be is a petty tribal warlord, then he will disappear on the scrap heap of history. His place as President Kabila's competitor will be taken, hopefully, by a better man, one with his own vision of DRC, albeit different from Kabila's, who can offer voters a rational choice and ensure that in a democratic and peaceful contention of great ideas the great nation of the DRC can rise to assume the position it so deserves in Africa.
